whats a small detail/decision in a piece of music u like for no real reason besides u think its cool? lyrical, mixing, instrumental, anything
i think i have a reason for liking or disliking basically everything in music so i dont think i have an exact answer youre looking for
but i do care about mixing/mastering a lot, way more than people expect.
a lot of people even misunderstand what mixing/mastering even is, because it's a very nebulous and almost abstract concept, because it is as equally scientific as it is subjective.
i do not mix and master all of my music perfectly, not that that's possible anyway. some examples of projects that i've worked tireless to engineer are love & ponystep, monarch of monsters, and paradise valley. those are records that i think are pristine. but i'm doing some projects right now where i either allow the mix/master to be really absurd or otherwise accentuate things that traditional engineers would be upset about sdfjklh. i am happy with both sides of this equation.
before i continue it's important to define these two things.
mixing: the act of taking all the individual tracks in a song and using techniques like gain staging, equalization, compression, saturation, and others to make them all fit together and sound the way the engineer and/or artist wants.
mastering: same thing, but instead of doing this on individual tracks, it's done to the entire song as a whole, single track. mastering also tends to prioritize loudness more than mixing does, so the final song is as loud as is necessary.
i put together this video example of demo version of some of my songs and mixed & mastered versions. the blue clips are unmixed and unmastered. the red ones are the final, mixed & mastered versions!
My Love is a Quickscope â this is the most subtle one of the examples, but listen closely to the way the drums and the bass sit with each other in between both versions. the demo version sounds a lot muddier and duller, while the drums and bass feel more coherent and clear in the final version. this was accomplished by equalizing the drums and basses so there would be pockets where their unique frequencies would sit without interfering with each other, while compressing them a bit more so that their dynamic range (the difference between loudest and quietest parts) would be reduced, making them both sound fatter together. i wanted quickscope to feel very punchy and transparent, so unlike most pop and edm songs, i actually did not compress the master of it very much. instead, i used a hard clipper which just chops off the tips of waveforms to give everything more space to be louder while still maintaining the OVERALL dynamic range that i set in the mixing stage.
PLAY DEAD! PLAY DEAD! â huge difference. almost all of the difference is owed to using saturation to bring out the high end in all the instruments and using compression to make the drums snappier, the bass more controlled, and everything less 'distant and muffled' sounding. what really brings everything out in the mastering stage here is the multiband compression, which is a style of compression that specifically affects different frequency ranges independently. using the multiband comp i can help keep the low end of the song tight and controlled while letting the frequencies above sort of go wilder and feel more energetic.
Musicians of Ponyville â this one really highlights the biases we tend to have when it comes to bass music, brostep. you'll notice the sub bass in the original demo is way way way louder. it might initially sound like a downgrade to have less sub bass in the final version. but for the song to be as loud and punchy as it is, the sub had to be tamed more, because low end frequencies eat up the most headroom in any audio situation. when you have clippers and compressors on the master, the sub bass is going to make them react more violently. not only that, but too much sub bass will sound really awful on certain systems, at least if they're not mixed properly. because brostep is actually more mid-range heavy compared to actual dubstep music, maximizing the loudness and low-mid range is slightly more important than the sub. when you listen to girls who are wizards, the song feels right at home mixing/mastering-wise. it's tough to make these choices, because i really love hearing that sub even louder.. but sometimes we sacrifice different aspects for other aspects in engineering.
most bands do not ever engineer their own music. but solo artists are more frequently doing it themselves. a lot of us pc musicians never had a choice to work with other engineers to begin with. i think it's important for the independent musician these days to at least know enough to walk into any standard recording studio and know how to run someones patch bay or mixing desk, even though almost everything you need is on a computer these days.
so does that mean i want everything to be pristinely mixed? is that what i value most? NO.
you may even notice in the examples i've provided, ESPECIALLY play dead, that even just the tonal style of the song shifts based on engineering. mixing/mastering is a part of the music making process to me rather than something i do afterwards. engineering is part of music's style very very often. and even imperfect, even shitty engineering practices can be super awesome as long as they're compatible with peoples' systems.
i made this song in 45 minutes from start to finish. there's no way i was going to have time to engineer it properly. to embrace the DIY aspect of it, i wanted it to be annoyingly distorted and crudely lofi. that's the charm of it. that's the style. i know how to mix and master things properly, but i don't care sometimes? because if music were to abide by the sterile environment of "perfect engineering" i think i would throw up. a lot of the reason older tunes, esp 60's and 70's records, sound so wonderful to us is because of the extra imperfections, pitch variations, and DISTORTION that older engineering practices imparted onto the sound. we actually try very hard to replicate a lot of those imperfections digitally, so obviously not everything can/should be done perfectly.
i am one of the biggest savant fans in the universe. and it's not because his mixing/mastering skills are great. this song is mixed like dogshit, absolutely and utterly trash engineering from an objective standpoint. AND YET. THIS SONG BREATHES SO DAMN MUCH AND HAS SO MUCH CHARACTER BECAUSE OF HOW IT FEELS LIKE EVERYTHING IS COMPRESSED SO TIGHTLY INTO EACH OTHER THAT THE ENTIRE SONG IS LIKE A MOVING, LIVING CREATURE. that's fucking awesome. some people might hate it. but i love it. that's the subjectivity of it all.
you wanna know what else is mixed like dogshit?
i'm famous for talking shit about my own album cutiemarks because of how horribly the entire album is engineered, and not on purpose. most of the songs on cutiemarks either sound too muddy or too thin, too distorted, or not distorted enough. nonexistent-meetcute sits very happily in the "sounds way too thin" category. if you compare it to the rest of my discogrpahy, and even other songs in cutiemarks, it sounds paper thin, too much high end, no mid frequencies, the drums are so boring, it's so scratchy and tinny and AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! i cant stand a lot of cutiemarks engineering, because i was just really lazy with it. it's especially tough for someone like me who not only engineers her only music but makes so many genres that all have different sound profiles to attend to. so naturally i'll have missteps. but i just can't stand cutiemarks for this reason. although antonymph is mixed and mastered really well, one of my better jobs i think. but nonexistent meetcute is an example of bad mixing that i dont like in context. and yet lots of people love this song. everything is subjective, so.
now. i'm going to sound like a broken record to the people who know me.. but the person who excites me the most when it comes to the engineering aspect of music:
space laces is on some other shit. i know for a fact he is on some phase and spectral fuckery that is scientifically more advanced than any of us are going to understand for the next several decades. he is able to get such insanely distorted, chaotic, bassy stuff going on in his projects that yet all sit very neatly, orderly, and perfectly with each other. every choice he makes, whether weird or precise, is just the most satisfying i've ever experienced with any electronic music. if you end up listening to space laces, the sound design is obviously the most impressive and amazing part of his work. but please pay extra attention to just how full, neat, and fat all of the musical elements sit with each other while still being chaotic and bassy. he's a fucking mystery to me.
and outside of electronic music, i've been especially excited with:
the new geese album "getting killed" is so fucking well done. i'm sure it being produced alongside kenny beats has something to do with it, but theres a much larger engineering team behind the record. everything on getting killed sounds light, airy, fuzzy, and crunchy in all the best ways, and all of that is the mixing and mastering choices to be honest. a lot of this album has a lot of tantalizing distortion and saturation that gets the drums thumping and crunching while the guitars glide and swoop so wispily over fuzzy basses with crackly overtones. and cameron winter's voice sounds so awesome, it's very up front, dry, and held together with a lot of really precise choices. mixing vocals is probably one of the hardest, non-phase related mixing things to do ever, so having solid dry vocals like this that feel very present and intimate is no mere feat.
i love mixing and mastering alot. whether it's absurdly precise or creatively dogshit. hope this answers your question even though i gave reasons for things.
